Cohorts and Projects

2019-2020 Fellows

Alex Brostoff (Comparative Literature), Danielle Simon (History and Literature of Music), and Christiane Stachl (Physical Chemistry), are conducting an assessment study on undergraduate Discovery Learning--a signature educational initiative to equip Berkeley undergraduate students with new ways of thinking and insights to tackle on real-world challenges and find their own voice and place in the world

2017-18 Fellows and Assessment Projects

David Bratt (East Asian Lit & Culture)---Project site: Campus Discovery Experience Initiative (Project mentor: Rae Harlson & Yukiko Watanabe

Justine Chia (MCB)---Project site: Molecular & Cell Biology (Project mentor: Abby Dernburg)  

Ignacio Escalante Meza (ESPM)---Project site: CNR Office of Instruction & Student Affairs (Project mentor: Rebecca Sablo & Lynn Huntsinger) 

Ryan Ikeda (Rhetoric)---Project site: Berkeley Center for New Media (Project mentor: Lara Wolfe)  

Matty Lichtenstein (Sociology)---Project site: Law School (Project mentor: Molly Van Houweling)  

Padmini Parthasarathy (Journalism)---Project site: Journalism (Project mentor: Roia Ferrazares) 

Danielle Poreh (Mech Engineering)---Project site: Certificate in Design Innovation (Project mentor: ) 

Landon Reitz (German)---Project site: German (Project mentor: Deniz Gokturk)  

Mark Stepaniak (MCB)---Project site: Molecular & Cell Biology (Project mentor: Abby Dernburg)  

Desiree Valadares (Architecture)---Project site: American Cultures Center (Project mentor: Victoria Robinson & Andrea Wise)  

Enrique Eduardo Valencia Lopez (Graduate School of Education)---Project site: Campus Discovery Experience Initiative (Project mentor: Amber Machamer & Audrey Thomas)  

Taiji Wang (Public Health)---Project site: School of Public Health (Project mentor: Deborah Barnett) 

2016-17 Fellows and Assessment Projects

Sarah-Dawn Albani (Art Practice)---Project site: Art Practice (Faculty: Allan Desouza)

The assessment project is aimed at illuminate the curricular direction of Art Practice undergraduate program. The fellow will examine curriculum alignment between courses and program outcomes via syllabi analysis and faculty interviews, benchmark the current curriculum with other peer institutions, and conduct a student exit survey to learn from students’ experience in the program.

Laura Armstrong (SESAME) and Geri Kerstiens (SESAME)---Project site: Chemistry, (Faculty: Anne Baranger & Michelle Douskey) 

College of Chemistry redesigned the general chemistry laboratory curriculum and experiments to focus on realistic contexts, student choice, green chemistry principles, and authentic science practices. The evaluation study has multiple goals: (1) examine the effectiveness of the implementation of the redesigned lab courses by interviewing stakeholders involved with the course and observe how materials are presented to students; (2) assess students’ green chemistry understanding and experimental design ability via surveys, focus groups, and lab observations. The fellow will create an assessment plan for our project, catalog the current state of the laboratory implementation, and contribute to developing, piloting, and refining performance measurement.

Audrey Haynes (Integrative Biology)---Project site: Biology 1B (Faculty: Jules Winters)

Biology 1B is an introductory course that serves diverse student population on campus (13 majors across 4 colleges, pre-med, etc.). Integrative Biology Department is interested in conducting a student survey with Biology 1B students to identify student barriers to learning, learning support needs, as well as usage patterns and usefulness of resources (learning tools) with a goal to improve student learning and success.

Taylor Johnston--Project site: Near Eastern Studies (Faculty: Carol Redmount)

This project is part of Department of Near Eastern Studies’ academic program review. The project will involve conducting curriculum analysis and alignment to streamline and rationalize undergraduate student learning in 3 divisions (Islamic, Hebrew, and Ancient).

Heather Savoy (Civil & Env Engineering)---Project site: Geography, (Faculty: Nathan Sayre)

The Department of Geography is evaluating its undergraduate and graduate programs as part of the department's academic program review (APR) process. The Graduate Assessment Fellow will help collect and analyze data on student demographics, performance, placement and satisfaction during the current (2007-15) and previous (1998-2006) review periods; help design and implement a survey of current graduate students; help plan a town hall meeting of current undergraduates; and assist in analyzing the data for the department's self-study report and external review.

Leela Velautham (Ed in Math, Science & Technology)---Project site: Art History (Faculty: Lisa Trever & Bonnie Wade)

The Art History department is engaged in evaluating the effectiveness of the new undergraduate curriculum in History of Art (in effect since Fall 2014), inform departmental decisions (e.g., possibility of a new BA/MA program sequence) and areas in need of improvement (e.g., career preparation, diversity & equity, etc.). Potential activities will include student focus groups, student and/or alumni survey, etc. 

Beatriz Brando (SESAME)---Project site: SMART/URAP research mentoring program (Grad Division) (Faculty: Rosemary Joyce, Yukiko Watanabe). Funded by the NSF, this evaluation project examines graduate student competencies on undergraduate student research mentoring. Pre-post surveys of graduate mentors and undergraduate researchers as well as research observation case studies are conducted to understand wh

ether Berkeley's research mentor training toolkit contributes to better mentoring outcome. 

2015-16 Fellows and Assessment Projects

Max Helix (GSE, SESAME): Max developed instruments (weekly journal prompts & poster rubrics) to measure STEM undergraduate students’ understanding of scientific concepts and practices at different stages in their undergrad research experiences. Rubrics were pilot-tested with poster presentations in Chemistry student research showcase event. Faculty Project lead: Anne Baranger (Chemistry) 

Vivek Rao (Engineering): Vivek assessed technical/oral communication skills in a capstone integration course (E295) in the Fung Institute Master's in Engineering program. Tasks included creating assessment methods for video presentation, effective reflection method, peer feedback, etc. He designed a quasi-experimental study to compare student performance between sections that utilized guided reflection and sections that had no-guidance. Faculty Project lead: Alexandre Beliaev (Engineering) 

Laura Pryor (GSE, POME): Laura assisted Graduate School of Education's effort in improving the effectiveness of the field studies component of the Education Minor Program. She conducted faculty interviews to clarify learning outcomes, created a logic model of field studies component, conducted student focus groups to solicit student experience. As a result of the findings, faculty decided to create a capstone paper requirement for the Ed Minor program. Faculty Project leads: Erin Murphy-Graham & Glynda Hull (GSE) 

Andrew Stevens (Agricultural & Resource Econ): Andrew evaluated the effectiveness of the first set of lower-division courses offered in the new Data Science undergrad curriculum. He clarified the course-level SLOs, examined the alignment between course activities and learning outcomes, and informed the instructors on the student achievement level (by outcome). Faculty Project leads: Cathryn Carson (History) & Anthony Suen (Data Science Initiative)

Elly Schmidt-Hopper (Journalism): The School of Journalism is starting a new summer undergraduate minor program. Elly conducted (a) student needs analysis survey and (b) curriculum analysis of peer institutions in order to design a new undergraduate minor in Journalism. Faculty Project lead: David Thigpen (Journalism)

Chia Okwu (GSE, School Psychology): The Department of Psychology recently made major changes in the undergraduate curriculum and is going through the Academic Program Review. As part of an effort to review the effectiveness of the undergraduate curriculum, Chia reviewed syllabi from two semesters, created a list of learning outcomes for each course, and conducted a curriculum gap and alignment analyses. Faculty Project leads: Ann Kring and Serena Chen (Psychology) 

Christoph Hanssmann (Sociology): The GWS Department is exploring to (re)design the curricular relationship between the GWS major/minor and LGBT minor. Data gathering included (a) gathering curricular information from peer institutions, (b) student surveys, and (c) student focus groups. Faculty Project lead: Leslie Salzinger (Gender and Woman's Studies) 

Maelia DuBois (History): Maelia designed fidelity/process and impact evaluation plans for the Digital Humanities Initiative, which involves multiple DH courses across disciplines. She analyzed common and unique outcomes across newly developed DH courses to enable the DH Initiative to come up with a way to assess the impact of DH on student learning on campus.  Faculty Project lead: Claudia von Vacano --Funded by the Digital Humanities

Elizabeth McBride (GSE, SESAME): The Graduate Division received funding from NSF to expand the Student Mentoring and Research Teams program, where doctoral students receive training in research mentoring and engage undergraduate students in research. Beth conducted a meta-synthesis of research mentoring competency literature and designed pre-post SMART program surveys to capture the growth of graduate mentoring competency and undergraduate’s research competency. Faculty Project leads: Rosemary Joyce, Linda von Hoene, Sabrina Soracco, and Yukiko Watanabe –Funded by the NSF Grant  

Alice Kantor, Daphne Matziaraki (Journalism): The School of Journalism is clarifying graduate student competency (knowledge and skills) for their master's program. Alice and Daphne will assist with articulation and mapping of competencies across curriculum. Project lead: Roia Ferrazares (Journalism) – Funded by the Instructional Improvement Grant (Fall semester only)

Eugene Chislenko (Philosophy): The Philosophy Department is taking the Academic Program Review as an opportunity to revisit their curriculum to build student readiness for philosophy research. Eugene will be reviewing syllabi and conducting student focus groups to identify areas of curriculum improvement. Faculty Project leads: John MacFarlane & Niko Kolodny (Philosophy) –Funded by the Instructional Improvement Grant (Fall semester only) 

2014-15 Fellows and Assessment Projects

Gema Cardona (GSE, Social and Cultural Studies): Gema will be conducting student surveys and focus groups with students in the Graduate School of Education (GSE) to gather feedback on students' program and advising experience. She will also be assisting GSE on gathering best practices on outcomes assessment from peer institutions to articulate an assessment plan as part of GSE's Academic Program Review efforts.

Tiffany Chang (MPH, Health & Policy Management)Tiffany will be assisting Professor William Dow on Health Policy and Management Division's (School of Public Health) effort in conducting a needs assessment of a new online degree program with multiple stakeholders (students, faculty, employers, and alumni).

Kirsten Hextrum (GSE, Social and Cultural Studies): Kirsten will be assisting Advising Director, Mary Howell, at theCollege of Engineering Student Services Centeron the development of the advising learning outcomes and program goal statements. Existing student survey will be aligned with the newly developed outcomes.

Shelly Steward (Sociology): Shelly is assisting Berkeley Connect Program (Director/Professor Maura Nolan) on conducting multiple sub-group analyses and cross-tab analyses of Berkeley Connect's exit survey data from multiple departments. She is also assisting the development of a long-range outcomes assessment plan for the program. 

Sean Tanner (Public Policy): Jonah Levy is leading assessment efforts in the Policitcal Science Department as part of the Academic Program Review. Sean is assisting Professor Levy on comparing UCUES data with other Social Sciences programs, revising the program's undergraduate curriculum map, and creating an undergraduate student exit survey. 

Sara Tischhauser (GSE, Science & Mathematics Education): Sarah will be assisting evaluation of the effectiveness of the Teacher-Scholar program (peer-to-peer and vertical learning program) in the College of Chemistry. The project is led by Professor Anne Baranger. Assessment activities involves surveys, classroom observations, interviews, and assessment of student written products.

Diah Wihardini (GSE, Policy, Organization, Measurement, & Evaluation): As part of the Academic Program Review process, Statistics Department is clarifying a comprehensive assessment plan and will be conducting student surveys and interviews to inform program improvement. Dian will be assisting Professor Ani Adhikari (UG and Grad curriculum chair).